Chapter Text
Derek’s sitting on the roof outside Stiles’ window—for protection, not to practice his creeper wolf routine, despite what Stiles says—when he hears a lot more movement than normal for midnight in the Stilinski house.
“Stiles, we gotta go!” yells John Stilinski from the kitchen.
Stiles is rattling thing around in his closet but he sticks his head out momentarily. “I know! Have you seen my jacket?”
“Just pick one!”
“I can’t just pick one, Dad! You know how pissed Nick got last year when I showed up in that red hoodie. I spent six hours listening to him lecture about how red was his color and it would be nice if I showed just a little respect instead of infringing on other people’s signatures, especially when he has to deal with our shit just to do his job.”
Derek stifles a laugh, because that sounds a lot like something he’d say. He can hear Stiles finally find whatever jacket he was missing and barrel down the stairs.
“Find it?”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Let’s go. Eira hates when we’re late.”
Derek can practically hear John rolling his eyes. “Thank you, son. I’d missed that over the last seventeen years.”
Then the house goes silent. For a second Derek wonders how John got Stiles to be quiet so quickly.
Except the house is too quiet. Like there’s no one there.
Derek gives it another five minutes, listening with all of his focus before he swings through Stiles’ window and investigates.
Stiles’ room is exactly as he expects. The bed’s rumpled like Stiles was on his stomach reading, then sat up to eat whatever he made for dinner, and finally gave up and kicked his way off the bed to move to his computer.
If Stiles had fallen asleep at all, the blankets would be rolled to the right.
Derek chooses to ignore that he knows the different ways Stiles’ bed sheets look.
The closet is a disaster, probably from Stiles’ frantic search for a jacket.
Most of the floor is clean, though there are papers and books scattered all over the desk. Derek always finds it fascinating that Stiles is a fairly neat person in general, only creating messes in areas that demand his focus.
A closer glance at the desk reveals that Stiles was researching traits of an alpha pack, history of past alpha packs and how to defeat them, and methods of self-defense.
There’s one odd book about ice but Derek sees no other notes on it so he dismisses it as something that’s actually for one of Stiles’ classes.
He smiles to himself at the sight of Stiles’ cartoon doodles of wolves in the margins of his notes, before recovering and scowling. And when he remembers he’s alone, the smile comes back again.
But Derek is definitely not thinking about the way Stiles’ odd habits make him happy.
He lingers a little longer than he should in Stiles’ room. Stiles has gotten used to him being there over the last few months and they’ve reached a comfortable camaraderie. But he still doesn’t get to have the time to get to know Stiles as well as he would like to.
For Derek, simple observation isn’t just a weird lurking habit as Stiles likes to joke. It gives him a sense of knowing people, associating sounds and smells and mannerisms until he feels like he knows someone inside and out. And when he knows someone, he can tell when something is off. It’s saved his life—and others—several times at this point.
And there are just certain aspects of Stiles that he hasn’t nailed down yet, mostly because Stiles will start talking or moving and Derek gets distracted by the way Stiles’ lips twitch before he breaks into a smile or how his fingers wrap around a pencil.
Derek gets distracted a lot when he’s around Stiles.
He doesn’t really even know how it started. At some point Stiles made him come over for information on why there was an Alpha pack in town and now Derek’s over at the Stilinski house several times a week.
It’s beginning to feel like home.
Still, he moves through the rest of the house quickly. There’s definitely no one in the house. The door hasn’t opened and only Stiles’ window was left open. But John and Stiles are gone.
Derek spends a few minutes sitting at the kitchen table, trying to figure out where the hell they went, before he goes back upstairs.
His intent is to exit through the window and come back tomorrow with a couple pack members to figure out what happened. There’s a small part of him that feels like he should be more concerned, but there was no struggle, and the two Stilinski men clearly planned on leaving. He hates feeling like he’s missing part of the story.
It used to be that his routine when not having the whole truth was to act like a raging douchebag around people. In his defense, a lot of the time that lack of knowledge gets people killed.
Stiles is the one who started making him sleep it off and deal with problems when he was calmer. If Stiles had to literally sprawl on top of Derek like an octopus the first time, Derek’s not saying a word. Now of course, he’d love to have Stiles on top of him. That moment however…just a lot of elbows and knees jamming into sensitive skin.
Derek thinks about how this would go if it involved any other member of the pack. They’d talk, he’d say what he wants to try, Stiles would research to make sure they had all the facts, and then they’d go to sleep for whatever was left of the night.
He’s starting to realize that Stiles being gone is allowing him to see just how much their lives and habits have merged together.
More surprising is that it doesn’t scare him.
Derek laughs to himself when he thinks about how Peter would tell him he’s becoming a real boy.
Not that Peter’s opinion matters.
Though Peter was the one to convince Stiles to wear tighter clothes.
No. Derek is not going to feel grateful to his crazy undead uncle for encouraging his attraction to a seventeen year old.
He’s not.
Derek tells himself he’ll just lie down for an hour. It’s 3am at this point, no sense in waking Scott up too early.
He grabs his sweats out of the top dresser drawer, not even registering that he’s here so much that Stiles made space in a drawer, and crawls under the covers.
The comforting smell of Stiles lingers on the pillows and Derek’s asleep within seconds.
He wakes up to an arm sprawled across his chest and the warmth of sunshine hitting the bed.
“Morning sourwolf,” says Stiles with a sleepy smile, lifting his head just enough to acknowledge that Derek is awake.
“I’m not a sourwolf,” gripes Derek. He doesn’t know why Stiles persists with the nickname. “I don’t grouch at you anymore.”
“You’re grouching right now,” teases Stiles. “But I call you sourwolf now because of your weird love of sour candy. Normal people do not eat crybabies by the handful.”
Stiles pushes himself up to a sitting position and swivels around so he’s facing Derek.
It’s a familiar move for Derek to prop himself up on an elbow and stare back at Stiles. He takes a brief moment to wonder if once he gets his courage up enough to ask Stiles out, if he could have moments like this forever.
There’s an odd security in the fact that Derek thinks the latter is more likely than rejection.
The distraction in the form of Stiles’ toned shoulders and bright eyes keeps Derek occupied a little longer than he intends.
Stiles finally breaks the silence. “So uh, what brought you to my house in the middle of the night?”
Derek shakes his head to clear it. “Oh, I wanted to see you.”
“Really?” Stiles’ entire face lights up at the words.
He takes another minute to wonder if he’s really been that bad at telling Stiles how much their friendship has meant to him over the last few months. “Well yeah. I like being here. It’s safe.”
“Oh. I um, I like having you here,” says Stiles softly and Derek reflects again on how amazed he is that somewhere in the past six months, Stiles became his best friend.
“Where’d you go though?” asks Derek, finally remembering the point of him staying over.
“Go?” questions Stiles.
Derek nods. “I was waiting for your dad to go to sleep and I heard you two talking about needing to leave. But then it was quiet and I couldn’t find you. So I waited.”
“Huh,” says Stiles. “Maybe you fell asleep sooner than you thought? Had a weird dream? Dad and I didn’t drive anywhere last night.”
“But…” Derek can tell he’s missing something. Stiles knows how to word things just right and Derek usually can’t catch on quickly enough to figure it out. Yet another reason he’s glad Stiles is normally on his side. “I really don’t think I was dreaming.”
Stiles grins at him. “C’mon Derek. I swear I never walked out the door. I found you in my bed and took advantage of a warm cuddly wolf. And you were out of it. You sure you’ve been getting enough sleep lately?”
Derek can’t help his feelings of confusion. Stiles isn’t lying to him but he wasn’t in the house. Derek is sure of that. But he also doesn’t have an answer to how Stiles disappeared into thin air if he didn’t use a normal exit and he’s pretty sure he’d lose any argument right now. Stiles is being weirdly evasive but not in a deceptive way and Derek never wins when Stiles gets this way.
“Okay,” he says finally.
“Do you need anything else?” asks Stiles.
Derek shakes his head. “Just be careful. The alpha pack is lying low right now but it feels like they’re up to something.”
Stiles nods in agreement. “Sure. Thanks for the heads up.”
“Yeah.” A few minutes later Derek is standing in the Stilinski yard, wondering what the hell is going on and a little unsure of how he made it outside. He hates to say it, but he needs to talk to Scott. Surely Stiles’ best friend knows what’s going on.